Resetting the Dominoes
There's a thing that happens when I'm in the process of drafting a book that I've always found hard to explain. I call it 'stacking', but I can never really find an appropriate metaphor. Dominoes are close, so that's what I'll go with.
As I iterate on a book, all the changes I need to make, the story, the character tweaks all sort of build up in my head. Everything becomes clearer and clearer as I build up what will ultimately become the final book. Pass after pass, things slot into place, the changes get massaged in, the characters become more real, their arcs stronger, but I have to keep all that in my head as I go, balancing it until I can get it on the page and worked into a complete whole.
Then something happens and all the pieces fall apart. It happened on Midnight Magic, and it happened on my current book last month. Picking up all the pieces and remembering where I was and what I was doing with them isn't easy, and it can be frustrating and time-consuming. It's nowhere near as bad as having to start over, but working back up into that momentum again can sometimes feel like it. It's not the work itself, it's the recapturing of a mental state.
I'm still re-stacking the dominoes. From character voices to all the things I was going to do to make the second draft way better than the first, it's part recall and part re-evaluation. Sometimes you gain perspective and become less precious about things, and sometimes it feels like there's some nugget of lost genius that's gone forever that I have to patch up as best I can.
Sometimes I just have to re-read my notes, other times I have to re-read entire swathes of the book to get things back (and remind myself that it's not all crap), but I can usually get there. As usual, it's starting that's the hard part. Spooling up the creation machine takes a few coughs and sputters, but it's usually falling in love with my characters again that gets it humming. I'm writing for them, telling their story, and once I realize what the missing pieces are, I strap in and get the work done to ensure it gets told.
Well, the belts are buckled and the helmets are on, so hopefully that means there will be a shiny new lesbian fantasy romance novel in the world soon!
Back to work.
As I iterate on a book, all the changes I need to make, the story, the character tweaks all sort of build up in my head. Everything becomes clearer and clearer as I build up what will ultimately become the final book. Pass after pass, things slot into place, the changes get massaged in, the characters become more real, their arcs stronger, but I have to keep all that in my head as I go, balancing it until I can get it on the page and worked into a complete whole.
Then something happens and all the pieces fall apart. It happened on Midnight Magic, and it happened on my current book last month. Picking up all the pieces and remembering where I was and what I was doing with them isn't easy, and it can be frustrating and time-consuming. It's nowhere near as bad as having to start over, but working back up into that momentum again can sometimes feel like it. It's not the work itself, it's the recapturing of a mental state.
I'm still re-stacking the dominoes. From character voices to all the things I was going to do to make the second draft way better than the first, it's part recall and part re-evaluation. Sometimes you gain perspective and become less precious about things, and sometimes it feels like there's some nugget of lost genius that's gone forever that I have to patch up as best I can.
Sometimes I just have to re-read my notes, other times I have to re-read entire swathes of the book to get things back (and remind myself that it's not all crap), but I can usually get there. As usual, it's starting that's the hard part. Spooling up the creation machine takes a few coughs and sputters, but it's usually falling in love with my characters again that gets it humming. I'm writing for them, telling their story, and once I realize what the missing pieces are, I strap in and get the work done to ensure it gets told.
Well, the belts are buckled and the helmets are on, so hopefully that means there will be a shiny new lesbian fantasy romance novel in the world soon!
Back to work.
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